[askyourmother]

The worst are the new "tech companies with internal recruiters, tech tests prior to interview, twenty stages to offer, who moan they can't attract the best. Of course not! The minute you said tech test, I said goodbye, the minute you said internal recruiters, I laughed as I slammed down the phone.

The best companies that can and do attract the best, still keep it simple - direct face to face interviews, max two stages to offer, no fucking around with shitty tech tests, and making the time and effort for the interview.

[danvasquez29]

I send out a test in between phone interview and face to face but it's very subjective, not really meant to weed out people who fail. The purpose of it is to create some technical talking points for the face to face interview in lieu of putting someone on the spot on the whiteboard. "I see you refactored this, but not this. Can you explain your thinking? Why did you decide this pattern fit the solution?" There can be many right answers, and especially many right reactions to wrong answers, and I like that conversation more than putting people through a whiteboard.

Also, agree on the 2 interview max. Technically we do 3, but the first is a 3 minute basic screen by the recruiter, not really an interview.

[pmiller2]

> ...3 minute basic screen by the recruiter....

Exactly. The recruiter call should be primarily to gauge interest and to get some idea if the candidate has any skills and experience whatsoever. I've gotten calls from recruiters who were clearly not technical people asking fairly deep technical questions. That's an instant turn off to me.

[strictnein]

I'm pretty sure we've all experienced this classic:

"Tech" Recruiter: "I saw that you have 7+ years of Java experience! That's great, we're looking for a senior Java dev!"

Me: "I have 7+ years of JavaScript."

"Tech" Recruiter: "Same thing, right?"

Me: ...

[pmiller2]

What's the big deal with internal recruiters? Most companies, unless they're very small, are going to have them.

[CaptSpify]

I actually prefer internal recruiters. At least they typically have some motivation against throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

[raverbashing]

Yeah, I agree. Better than outside recruiters who usually have a fuzzier idea of what the company does

[jcadam]

Yea, I recently turned down an interview when I was told there would be 4 technical interviews, followed by a 2 week trial period working as a contractor. How about no!?